Graphic Cards Nvidia Disables PhysX in Presence of ATI GPU

[Shripad]

so what you're saying is, you expect it to work because the faq doesn't say that it won't? would you suddenly be satisfied and not pissed off anymore if they added a few words to the faq?

also, the problem is not related to the hardware. so it's not like they've been misleading users for 2 years like you stated. it only arises with windows 7, and that hasn't even officially released yet.

Nope,

Windows 7 has been officially released to ACM, MSDN some OEMs and official RC is still active.

And its too late to change FAQ, you cant change your official word after you disable some feature to suit yourself. Its simply unacceptable and illegal and unethical to do so.

You are free to add things and make them optional. But not remove it without compensating current users.

 

[spindoctor]

@spindoctor: Probably you didn't get what I wrote before. nVidia has no obligation to support multi-vendor GPU config... fine, but nVidia HAS obligation to keep the previously working feature in working state. Not disable it via drivers just because someone doesn't wanna use nVidia card as primary graphic accelerator.

I'll say it again, I paid for it, there is nothing preventing it from working technically, so it should work. If you're disabling it deliberately then you're cheating me and robbing my money. :no:

it's not like physx doesn't work anymore. you still get what you paid for. it still works, as long as you don't use a multi vendor gpu config. which you yourself have said that they are under no obligation to support.

if you really want multivendor gpus and physx, you can go back to the old, unsupported drivers where it's not locked out and use those for as long as you want.

 

[WingZero]

Take this P***X



AMD Announces Open Physics Initiative Designed to Bring New Levels of Realism to Gaming, Simulations, Popular Applications

AMD and Pixelux Entertainment announced a joint development agreement that is part of the AMD effort to greatly expand the use of real-time physics with graphics through the open source Bullet Physics engine. By encouraging development of physics middleware built around OpenCL and Bullet Physics, AMD and Pixelux offer a route toward physics simulation that spans game consoles, PCs and other hardware platforms. The latest graphics technologies, like the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of GPUs, offer incredible visual fidelity and high performance physics simulation by taking the next step in realistically animating how rendered game objects move, deform and break.

“Proprietary physics solutions divide consumers and ISVs, while stifling true innovation; our competitors even develop code that they themselves admit will not work on hardware other than theirs,” said Eric Demers, chief technology officer for graphics at AMD. “By working with Pixelux and others to enable open support of physics on OpenCL and DirectX 11 capable devices we are taking the exact opposite approach.”

As the latest software developer to take advantage of ATI Stream technology to leverage multi-core CPUs and GPUs to accelerate execution of highly parallel functions, Pixelux will enable game developers to offer improved performance and interactivity across a broad range of OpenCL capable PCs. AMD is also actively pursuing support of Bullet Physics via the DirectCompute API in DirectX 11.

“Pixelux wants ensure that our technology can take advantage of the computing resources that any particular hardware platform offers without locking in our users to any single platform,” said Mitchell Bunnell, CEO of Pixelux. “By working with AMD to run our software in OpenCL we stay true to that goal.”

Pixelux is an industry leader in material physics simulation based on the Finite Element Method. After many years of exclusivity, Pixelux has announced they will be providing a new version of its Digital Molecular Matter (DMM) System that can be licensed by anyone and that more easily integrates with other physics systems. This new version of DMM will feature integration with the free and open source Bullet Physics engine. DMM and Bullet are designed to operate together to enable players to experience visually and kinetically realistic worlds where objects react as they do in real-life. From crumbling stone walls, denting metal, splintering wooden beams and even swaying organic plant life, the combination of DMM and Bullet Physics, will be designed to enable users to experience the next generation of physics as never before and offer an amazing solution for game developers and incredible realism for players.

AMD Announces Open Physics Initiative Designed to Bring New Levels of Realism to Gaming, Simulations, Popular Applications

 

[spindoctor]

Nope,

Windows 7 has been officially released to ACM, MSDN some OEMs and official RC is still active.

And its too late to change FAQ, you cant change your official word after you disable some feature to suit yourself. Its simply unacceptable and illegal and unethical to do so.

You are free to add things and make them optional. But not remove it without compensating current users.

this news isn't new. it's at least a few weeks old. besides, releasing the rc, or to msdn users or to oem's is not exactly the same as an official launch.

as for the faq, you're seriously just arguing semantics now. it doesn't say that it won't work specifically with ati? it doesn't specifically say that it will work with ati either. so your problem is simply based on your interpretation of the faq.

 

[madnav]

what about OpenCL along with dx11 ?? isn't it anyways going to bring physx support to ati cards ??

 

[spindoctor]

what about OpenCL along with dx11 ?? isn't it anyways going to bring physx support to ati cards ??

nope. physx is built with cuda. opencl is an open standard which will run on both nv/ati cards, so any gpu accelerated physics designed with it will run on both.

edit - unless nvidia ports over physx to opencl, which is unlikely to happen.

 

[Shripad]

this news isn't new. it's at least a few weeks old. besides, releasing the rc, or to msdn users or to oem's is not exactly the same as an official launch.

as for the faq, you're seriously just arguing semantics now. it doesn't say that it won't work specifically with ati? it doesn't specifically say that it will work with ati either. so your problem is simply based on your interpretation of the faq.

No, thats not my problem.

The responsibility for support lies on company. Nvidia wont be able to hold its case in any legal matter regarding this. Its not about interpretation. Its about denying users the full use of the hardware which they crippled at later date on purpose.
If they continue like this, I can see EU taking similar action against them as they did with many others

Physx itself is a farce and I believed it ever since it became a closed proprietary standard. All such standards in past have met same end. I will not make my purchasing decisions on a standard that is not universal. So it does not really matter to me. I dont even use Physx even though I have 3 Nvidia cards with me at this very moment.

But none of this can justify this move by Nvidia.

 

[spindoctor]

The responsibility for support lies on company. Nvidia wont be able to hold its case in any legal matter regarding this. Its not about interpretation. Its about denying users the full use of the hardware which they crippled at later date on purpose.
If they continue like this, I can see EU taking similar action against them as they did with many others

actually no, there is no legally binding agreement made by nvidia to support physx with an ati gpu, and until that is not done, no one can bring a case against them.

and the EU sues when it sees anticompetitive practices. nvidia is doing nothing of the sort here, it's not like they are blocking amd/ati from doing anything. the only thing they are doing is blocking the use of proprietary technology in the presence of another vendor's tech.

 

[YoGi-Sama]

Supporting PhysX ON ATi GPU... that's not nVidia is bound with, BUT Supporting PhysX on nVidia GPU, regardless it's position in system, that nVidia has no right to deny.

They didn't say anything about not supporting Physx on nV GPU paired along WITH ATi GPU. As a matter of fact, user could do it without any kind of driver hack is proof that it was perfectly working feature under that condition. If they had done this since start, it would have been different matter. nVidia can very well land in deep water here legally, as they INTENTIONALLY removed the perfectly functional feature at later date in driver update. This my friend, is THE problem here. I don't know why you can't see it or don't want to see it.

 

[spindoctor]

let me try this your way

They didn't say anything about not supporting Physx on nV GPU paired along WITH ATi GPU.

they didn't say anything about supporting physx on an nv gpu paired along WITH an ati gpu either. can you understand that? they have never promised to make it work with a multigpu setup.

As a matter of fact, user could do it without any kind of driver hack is proof that it was perfectly working feature under that condition.

it still is. go back to the 185 driver series and you can happily get physx, but it's UNSUPPORTED. they have no obligation to support physx in a card alongside an ati gpu, because they have never claimed that they will.

nVidia can very well land in deep water here legally, as they INTENTIONALLY removed the perfectly functional feature at later date in driver update. This my friend, is THE problem here. I don't know why you can't see it or don't want to see it.

this perfectly functional feature still exists. they are just not supporting it anymore. and no, they will not land in deep water legally because they haven't done anything illegal. that my friend, is the simple answer. i don't know why you can't see it or don't want to see it.

 

[Shripad]

let me try this your way

they didn't say anything about supporting physx on an nv gpu paired along WITH an ati gpu either. can you understand that? they have never promised to make it work with a multigpu setup.

it still is. go back to the 185 driver series and you can happily get physx, but it's UNSUPPORTED. they have no obligation to support physx in a card alongside an ati gpu, because they have never claimed that they will.

this perfectly functional feature still exists. they are just not supporting it anymore. and no, they will not land in deep water legally because they haven't done anything illegal. that my friend, is the simple answer. i don't know why you can't see it or don't want to see it.

You havent read the antitrust laws have you m8?

Stopping support prematurely can put any company in soup.

Its not obligatory to inform buyer what your item will work with ( in certain cases even this is obligatory ). BUt it is obligatory to inform under which conditions it will not be allowed to work or it wont be supported.

 

[spindoctor]

You havent read the antitrust laws have you m8?

Stopping support prematurely can put any company in soup.

Its not obligatory to inform buyer what your item will work with ( in certain cases even this is obligatory ). BUt it is obligatory to inform under which conditions it will not be allowed to work or it wont be supported.

unless you're a lawyer who specializes in international antitrust law, i'm going to assume that you don't know a much about the intricacies of the subject either.

stopping support of a product can not and will not 'put a company in soup'. antitrust law applies when a company uses it's position of dominance to harm another company and it's product. let me know how ati is financially harmed by nvidia dropping support for physx, and then we might have a discussion.

also, your point about being 'obligated' to inform the conditions under which it won't work makes no sense. if it did, we'd see lawsuits alleging cars can't fly and toothbrushes that don't fire lasers, because it was not mentioned that they wouldn't :|. you are basing your argument on an ambiguous interpretation of an faq that is not a legally binding document anyway. if you can find a source where nvidia has specifically said that they will allow physx on their gpus to work with ati cards, then yes, you have a point that they are lying.

also, and i repeat this for the 3rd time now, this is a problem that has come about after windows 7. a product that has not officially released. and that came into being/testing less than a year ago. before this, there was no way to run multiple vendor gpus anyway, and thus was a non issue. the multi gpu approach works, but nvidia has simply decided to not support it. i'm not sure how many ways i need to say this... it works, it's just not supported anymore.

i also don't see why there is so much moral outrage over a company making a standard business decision like this to protect their investment. in the bigger picture, the number of people who even know about the ability to use multiple gpus from 2 vendors will be extremely limited. the number of people who were planning to do it will be less. the number of people who actually have an ati card and were going to buy an nvidia card is even less. the number of people who actually went out and bought an nvidia card just for physx (and who thus based their decision on a feature present in a beta os) is probably minuscule. and i feel sorry for them, because they got screwed sadly. those are really the only people who should be b**ching about this. instead, this has somehow become a sore point for the usual ati v/s nvidia arguments.

 

[blackprince]

i basic understanding is ,
In Requirements for running this card No where Nvidea mentioned that ATI card shouldn't be there, so on all machines that has minimum requirement nvidea card should run in full mode.
physX is advertised on top of the cover of the product.. its enough to make it supported.
or for any one to claim it should work.

If nvidea doesn't say they dont support PhysX in product manual,on a machine that has ATI card, they could easily be landed in leagal trouble for disabling it via driver.
if they could have put in small font into some user manual, or disabled it from SKU via some hardware way, it was arguable saying its a limitation.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

Well, they never mentioned mentioned explicitly anywhere that they will support GPU configurations other than nVida. They mentioned heterogeneous GPU's, but they are still talking about their own GPU's as long as they do not make an explicit mention that they support non nVidia GPU's. In fact even the word GPU was coined by nVidia and explicitly referred to their GeForce series starting with GeForce 256, its another story that it became a general term later that others used with their own Graphics Accelerators.

As for anti-trust case, I don't see how a case can even be framed against them.

1. They never mentioned explicitly anywhere that they will support non-nVidia GPU's.

2. If they announce support for non nVidia GPU's, they would have to test their cards throughly in non nVidia configurations, otherwise they will end up in trouble with their customers, So if they indeed support non nVidia GPUs, it would have been well documented. What Shripad pointed out is just a vague reference in the FAQ that can be interpreted in several ways.

3. Testing and supporting ATI GPU configurations requires additional investment of money and time. They are not doing it as its not a supported configuration. So, if its just an unsupported feature, I don't see how anyone can stop them from disabling it altogether even if its via drivers.

4. I don't see how AMD is loosing money, Its nVidia that's loosing money, even if its an unsupported feature, people were buying ATI cards for Graphics and nVidia cards for physx, now they will stop buying those nVidia cards for Physx. I don't know how many will compromise on their GPU purchase just for Physx. Not many I would think. I don't see how anyone can make a case stand against nVidia when they did not even officially declare Physx support in non nVidia GPU Configurations.

 

[NinByChoice]

Physx itself is a farce and I believed it ever since it became a closed proprietary standard. All such standards in past have met same end. I will not make my purchasing decisions on a standard that is not universal.

Just to clarify - It is not a proprietary standard. It is open for other vendors to implement. ATI chose not to implement it on their graphics card. Heres the snippet from the article in case you did not read it.

Physx is an open software standard any company can freely develop hardware or software that supports it.

 

[Shripad]

^^ not really.

Its not open standard. It is proprietary middleware.

If you want PhysX, you have to adopt CUDA which is again Nvidia proprietary standard.

And whatever Nvidia said, ATI clarified it back in April itself that NV never approached them properly with PhysX and they never really opened CUDA to anyone else.

 

[spindoctor]

^^ not really.

Its not open standard. It is proprietary middleware.

If you want PhysX, you have to adopt CUDA which is again Nvidia proprietary standard.

And whatever Nvidia said, ATI clarified it back in April itself that NV never approached them properly with PhysX and they never really opened CUDA to anyone else.

actually, physx is free for anyone to use and develop for. you will be surprised at the number of games out today that use physx... this includes every unreal engine 3 game. physx works on the cpu most of the time.

what is not open is gpu acceleration of physx. the cuda architecture is used to get physx on the gpu.

the reason why ati doesn't have hardware physx is very a murky issue with no clarity on either side. frankly, it's not nvidia's job approach ati to get them to use gpu physx... in fact, it's a feature they have that ati should approach nvidia for. i've heard that ati asked nvidia to use the technology but nvidia priced the licensing fees too high. i've also heard that ati doesn't want to invest in a technology/architecture that is controlled by it's competitor, which makes sense really. they would rather wait for directx 11 compute and opencl to create an open, non proprietary gpu physics system. there is even talk that amd/ati is putting it's weight behind havok to create gpu physics, but this makes no sense because havok is owned by intel and they are not going to do any favors for amd/ati, just like nvidia wouldn't. all of this is pure speculation and rumors, and no one knows the truth... all we can say is that ati has not licensed physx technology from nvidia, but we don't know why exactly.

 

[Happy Singh]

What to do with PhysX disabled or enabled in a graphic card!:bleh:
don't ati play crysis,far cry2,UT3....and so on,i think crysis is the most
heavy processing pc game today,for few PhysX based games people like
nvidia that also much expensive..ya crysis is also nvidia optimized games
so what ati can also run it as nvidia..there is no difference in performance:hap5:
second UT3 also basically a PhysX based game,but run perfectly on ATI:bleh:
games like warmonger and all need full nvidia that's not a big issue,buy a high
end ati card with a cheap PhysX card, you will done:hap2:

 

[NinByChoice]

^^ not really.
Its not open standard. It is proprietary middleware.

Physx is an open software standard

It IS an open standard. Quoting again from the article.

If you want PhysX, you have to adopt CUDA which is again Nvidia proprietary standard.

And whatever Nvidia said, ATI clarified it back in April itself that NV never approached them properly with PhysX and they never really opened CUDA to anyone else.

PhysX can be implemented using any language or GPU programming technology. NVIDIA implements PhysX on CUDA, doesnt mean everyone has to implement it on CUDA. ATI can implement PhysX on Stream or whatever GPGPU language they want (Brook?), if they so choose. ATI does not want to support the standard only because its promoted by the competition.

Physx is an open software standard any company can freely develop hardware or software that supports it.

 

[Shripad]

It IS an open standard. Quoting again from the article.

PhysX can be implemented using any language or GPU programming technology. NVIDIA implements PhysX on CUDA, doesnt mean everyone has to implement it on CUDA. ATI can implement PhysX on Stream or whatever GPGPU language they want (Brook?), if they so choose. ATI does not want to support the standard only because its promoted by the competition.

I Read the Physx license agreement.

Unless I interpreted it in wrong way this is what it said.

"

“Licensed Platforms” means the following:

- Any PC or Apple Mac computer with a NVIDIA CUDA-enabled

processor executing NVIDIA PhysX;

- Any PC or Apple Mac computer running NVIDIA PhysX software

executing on the primary central processing unit of the PC only;

- Any PC utilizing an AGEIA PhysX processor executing NVIDIA

PhysX code;

- Microsoft XBOX 360;

- Nintendo Wii; and/or

- Sony Playstation 3

"

It is open as in its free to use and create.

But they clearly mention the ownership of any code or material will stay with Nvidia. engine and SDK is free.

BTW Nvidia edited their FAQ and finally added no support for non nv gpu